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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

What a tangled web we weave

Hubby is a park and recreation supervisor for a municipality.One of the duties he and his crew perform is grounds maintenance for the town property.Unlike many in a supervisory role, hubby is very hands-on and busts his hump in the trenches with his guys.

I like to hear about his workday. So the other day he asked me if I wanted to hear something gross that had happened at work. I was prepared for the worst. I pictured him running over a nest of baby bunny rabbits with a riding mower . . . fur flying, blood dripping from the blades and all that kind of stuff. What can I say? I have an active imagination; probably from reading so many Stephen King novels. Anyhoo, it wasn’t anything as gory as cream-of-Thumper. Whew! No blood and guts. Okay, then how bad could it be?

He had spent the morning mowing. When he got back to the shop for lunch he left the mower on the trailer and went to eat.

When he was done eating he went back to the mower to find it covered with millions of baby spiders and tiny little webs.

So that got me thinking of Charlotte’s Web and Wilbur . . . awwwwww babies!!! Meanwhile, I’m oblivious to the fact that hubby is totally skeeving out. Apparently, they weren't so cute.

He didn’t know how they got there; maybe he had run over a nest or an egg sac dropped on the mower and busted open or something. Whatever had happened, his mower was verily writhing with spiderlings. The point is, he was not going to get back on that machine while it was squirming with vermin and pestilence.

I start giggling because it’s just too funny!

He’s all like, “You don’t understand! There were millions of them . . . covering the mower!”

And, I’m all like, “Hee hee hee”.

And he's all like,"Millions of spiders!!"

And, I’m all like, “Hee hee hee”.

He tried to blast them off with compressed air. Baby spiders were flying all over the place but it wasn’t a particularly effective method of removing them. Plenty were still clinging and scurrying for dear life.

Next he thought of using a propane torch. So, he’s going over the mower with the flame when he realized that along with baby spiders dying a horrifying, fiery death, bits of grass and other debris is burning too. Burning up a $50, 000 mower . . . uh, yeah, not so smart an idea.

Then he decided to take extreme measures and pressure wash the mower to rid himself of the creepy critters. So he sprayed them with a deluge of pressurized water. Baby arachnids flew off in sprays and ran down the driveway in rivulets. When he thought he got them all he put the pressure washer thing-a-ma-jigger away. When he returned another wave of creepy crawlers had emerged . . . thousands this time instead of millions . . . but still icky. He pressure washed the mower again . . . still more spiders . . . and again . . . fewer spiders but still there . . . and again . . . finally he had gotten enough of them that the mower was acceptably mowable.

I am still all like, “Hee hee hee”.

Spiders may produce several egg sacs containing several hundred eggs. One female may produce as many as 3,000 eggs in a series of several sacs. So, let’s say that I believe there were about a million baby spiders . . . that would mean at some point either 350 mommy spiders deposited a whole bunch of egg sacs on the mower or thousands of egg sacs dropped from the sky onto the mower while he was working. Just sayin’.